Chapter 37 #3
I stepped inside and grabbed it, running my hand along the handle out of pure habit before I noticed the small black spider sitting near the metal head. It barely moved when I leaned closer.
Slowly, I held my hand out beneath it and let it crawl onto my skin, its tiny legs dragging lightly across my palm as I watched it for a second in silence.
Then I carefully placed it down on one of the shelves inside the shed, picked the shovel back up, and walked back outside, leaving the door hanging open behind me.
The path back felt shorter, or maybe I just didn’t notice it as much this time, because my head was quieter now, focused.
By the time I reached her grave again, the shovel rested heavy in my hand, the edge of it catching the light as I stepped back into that empty patch of ground where no one came anymore.
I stepped in front of the stone, looked at her name again, then lowered my gaze to the dirt beneath it.
Yeah, this felt better already. I didn’t give myself too much time to think, if I had, I might’ve hesitated.
Might’ve stood there staring at that stone again until the moment passed and turned into something else, so I didn’t.
I just stepped forward, planted the shovel into the ground right in front of the grave and pushed down.
The earth didn’t welcome it, it resisted.
Packed tight, heavier than it looked, the top layer dry and stubborn like it had decided a long time ago that nothing was supposed to get through again.
I leaned my weight into it harder, boot pressing down against the metal, forcing it deeper until it finally broke through with a dull crunch, then I pulled.
The first scoop came up rough, uneven, clumps of dirt falling apart as I threw them to the side.
Again and again. The sound started to build around me.
The scrape of metal biting into soil, the thud of dirt hitting the ground, my own breathing creeping in underneath it, getting heavier without me really noticing when it changed.
The smell followed, damp earth, it clung to the back of my throat, mixed with the copper taste that still hadn’t left my mouth and for a second it almost made me pause.
The shovel hit resistance again and again, roots catching on the edge of it, forcing me to yank harder, tearing them loose with a sharp snap that echoed a little too loudly in the quiet.
My hands started to ache. Fingers tightening around the handle, skin dragging with every movement until it burned in that dull, familiar way. I shifted my grip, didn’t stop.
Sweat started building along my spine, sticking my shirt to my back, sliding down over my skin that was already raw in places I didn’t want to think about.
Every time I bent forward, something pulled in my side where the blade had caught me earlier.
A messy pain. It flared when I pushed too hard, when I twisted wrong, when I forgot for a second that my body wasn’t whole.
I kept forgetting, or maybe I just didn’t care enough to adjust.
The world around me started to narrow. Graves started blurring together, fading into each other until they became nothing more than pale smears in the dark.
The trees at the edge of the cemetery stopped looking real too, turning into long shadows watching from a distance.
It was just the ground. The shovel, the movement.
In, down, push, lift, throw. Again and again and again.
Time slipped, I don’t know how long I was there, I just kept going.
My breathing got rougher, uneven, dragging in too much air and not doing anything useful with it, but I didn’t slow down.
Something in me had locked onto it. A single direction, no room for anything else, no thought, no second-guessing, just dig.
The hole deepened. Dirt piling up around me, uneven mounds forming at the edges where I’d thrown it without looking.
My arms started to shake, not enough to stop, just enough that I noticed it once, distantly, before it stopped mattering.
My grip tightened again. The handle dug into my palm, my shoulder protested.
My side throbbed harder now, a steady pulse that lined up with my heartbeat, each one hitting a little harder than the last. I drove the shovel down again, and again and again, until it changed.
The sound.
It wasn’t the dull resistance of soil, it wasn't the snap of roots, it was hollow. A different kind of contact, more muted and the shovel didn’t sink the way it had before, it stopped, hit something solid underneath.
The vibration traveled up through the handle, into my hands, up my arms, different enough that it cut straight through whatever state I’d fallen into.
I froze. Breathing hard, chest rising and falling too fast, sweat running down into my eyes, stinging.
Then I looked down, at where the metal edge had met something and for the first time since I started, I stopped digging.
Something in me snapped the second I realized what I’d hit.
I dropped the shovel without thinking and went down on my knees in the dirt, hands digging straight in where the metal had struck.
The soil was colder down here, heavier, clinging under my nails, packing into my skin as I tore through it faster than the shovel ever could.
I didn’t care about the mess, didn’t care about the way it scraped my knuckles raw or how the dirt forced its way into the half open cut along my side when I twisted too fast, I just dug, fast, like if I didn’t get there now, it would disappear again.
The earth started giving way in heavy clumps now, loosened by everything I’d already torn through.
Dirt packed itself under my nails and scattered across my arms as I dragged it aside faster and faster, my breathing turning harsh enough that it burned the back of my throat every time I pulled air in.
And then I hit something pale beneath the dirt.
Barely visible at first, just a streak of white buried under the black soil, but it was enough to make my entire body stop.
My hands stayed buried in the earth while I stared at it, my pulse suddenly beating hard enough that I could feel it in my throat.
Then something in me snapped forward again.
I started ripping the dirt away faster, throwing it aside with both hands, mud grinding into my skin and under my nails while more and more of the surface came into view beneath me.
A coffin.
The white wasn’t clean anymore. It had dulled, stained in places where the ground had pressed in over time, streaked with brown and grey where moisture had settled and stayed, but it was still there.
Still solid, after all those years and that did something to me.
I don’t even know what, I just knew I needed it uncovered.
All of it. I forced myself back, pushing up from the hole, boots slipping in the loose dirt as I climbed out, chest heaving, hands shaking in a way that had nothing to do with exhaustion anymore.
I needed something heavier, stronger. My eyes moved fast over the ground around me, scanning without really seeing until they landed on it.
A rock, bigger than the one I’d used before, rough edges catching what little light was left.
I bent, grabbed it with both hands this time, feeling the weight drag at my arms, then turned and dropped back into the grave, landing harder than I meant to as my boots hit uneven ground beside the coffin.
The force of it tore through my side, something wet shifting under my shirt, but my body pushed past it anyway.
My focus was already back on the coffin, or more accurately, what was inside it.
I adjusted my grip on the stone, stepping closer and then I heard it.
A sound, faint, from somewhere beyond the grave.
I stilled, head snapping up towards the trees…
It came from there. A soft disturbance, branches bruising against each other, something moving where nothing should’ve been moving.
I squinted into the darkness. It had crept in without me fully noticing, the last of the light gone, replaced by something thicker.
Fog had settled low between the trees, stretching thin across the ground, blurring the shapes of everything past a certain distance.
It made the space feel smaller, closed in.
My eyes tried to adjust, scanning the direction the sound had come from, but there was nothing clear to lock onto, just shadows shifting in ways that could’ve been anything, or nothing at all.
I stayed there for a second longer than I meant to, the rock still held tight in my hands, my breathing the only thing breaking the silence now.
Whatever it was, wind, an animal, something else, I almost let it go.
Just wind, I told myself. Branches shifting, something small moving through the undergrowth, nothing that mattered.
I looked back down, back to the coffin, tightened my grip on the stone and then it came again, closer this time.
My head snapped back up before I could stop it, eyes cutting toward the trees again, trying to pin it down this time instead of brushing it off.
The fog had thickened. It clung low to the ground, curling between the trees until everything beyond a few meters blurred together and refused to stay fully clear. I narrowed my eyes, focused.
There, movement, not wind.
Something held its place just behind one of the trees, half hidden, just enough of it visible that my brain could put it together before I even wanted it to, a figure.
I tried to focus harder, forced my eyes to lock in and then I recognized the figure.
Zwierek.
One shoulder, part of his face, the outline of his body pressed into the shadow of the trunk like he’d grown out of it. We locked eyes and everything else dropped. Suddenly there was no distant noise from the world outside this place, just that line between us.